Is Knowing British Tax Laws Proof against Radical Islam?

As I keep saying, it you can't name radical Islam as the enemy, you can't properly fight it. A colorful example comes today from the United Kingdom, where the chillingly named "Home Office Cohesion and Faiths Unit" issued a consultation paper that requires immigrant religious leader to be tested after a year about such matters as parliamentary democracy, the tax system, anti-discrimination laws, citizen's rights, the recent history of migration to the U.K., the country's basic law, the role of local authorities, and ways of securing access to advice about housing, employment and health care. In addition to this knowledge of Britain, they would have to show they had integrated with other faith groups, whatever that means. These regulations follow other ones in August 2004 that require immigrant religious leaders to speak the English language.

Comment: This is plain silly, as an Islamist can know as well as anyone else the British housing system; conversely, knowing about such arcana is surely no proof against Islamism. Indirection of this sort will never achieve what the authorities intend. Only naming the problem and confronting it squarely will do so. (March 9, 2005)

April 19, 2005 update: Paris buys into the same theory, namely, that to know France is love France. It has therefore set up language and cultural classes for imams in Auvergne, a region of central France. United Press International explains that "broken French no longer cuts it when it comes to preaching to the country's estimated 5 million Muslims." Dominique de Villepin, minister of the interior, has set up a French civilization program, starting with language courses and to be followed, in later 2005, by courses for imams on French history, civics, and culture. These programs in turn, represent just the beginning of a more ambitious plan to create a "French Islam" by creating university training programs for French-born imams.

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